San Diego man dies in fire saving family

On Monday, as America celebrated the life of a civil-rights leader and the second inauguration of its first black president, Sam’s father reflected on the most emotional speech a man can give: a eulogy for his child.

Sam, 23, died Jan. 9 while trying to save his 92-year-old grandmother from a fire that consumed their house in Starkville, Miss. The evidence suggests the San Diego native managed to get his 89-year-old grandfather, who suffers from dementia, safely to the yard, then returned to help his grandmother and the elderly couple’s caretaker.

Their three bodies were found a few steps from the front door, after the grandfather had told a firefighter: “At least Sam got out.”

“He would have been a great EMT,” Joe Morris said in a eulogy delivered to about 100 friends and family members in San Diego on Sunday. “He even considered becoming a firefighter! In hindsight, I should have encouraged that one. The training alone would have been worth it.”

January has been an awful month for heroes. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong finally admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs in each race. Heisman Trophy finalist Manti Te’o acknowledged that his girlfriend and her death were fake.

And days before those revelations, fire broke out in broad daylight at the house that George and Celia Robson built in rural Mississippi about 35 years ago. How could she have known then she was building her coffin?

She couldn’t. Not when the physical therapist added a swimming pool and an office to work from home. Not when her husband, a history professor, filled their two-story wooden house with all those books on the Civil War.

Then a year ago, it became clear the couple, ailing with mounting mobility issues, needed more than a part-time caretaker could provide. They needed full-time help. They needed family.

By coincidence or destiny, Sam needed something, too: a fresh start.

He had overcome a learning disability that included Asperger’s Syndrome to graduate from the Winston School in Del Mar. He had gone to Mesa College to become a video game designer, but found the coursework too demanding. So what then? He’d always dreamed of helping others, of becoming a cop or a Marine, a physical therapist like his grandmother or maybe an X-ray technician. When he was 2, he’d dreamed of being Batman.

“He had a towel wrapped around his neck as a cape,” his sister, Ilana, told me. “Getting the cape off my brother was a nightly affair.”

Twenty years later, Sam thought about becoming an electrician and saw that Mississippi had more career opportunities than San Diego did. And this surely made for an easier decision: Sam would get Celia’s office and pool, which she had long since stopped using, as one big bedroom.

Joe spent three days in a car driving Sam across the country, then a week getting him settled, wiring a house without Internet access so his son could stay in touch with the online gaming community he so enjoyed. How could Joe have known he would never hug his son again? He couldn’t.

On Jan. 9, fire officials arrived at the house just before noon. It was engulfed in flames, and George, who had taken to falling when he walked but still refused a cane or a wheelchair, was outside in his pajamas.

How could he have made it out if it weren’t for an able-bodied grandson?

“Right now, the story I have in my mind is that my brother is a hero and that he rose to the call of duty and didn’t think twice about his selfish needs but thought exclusively about the collective needs of my gramma and (the caretaker) inside,” Ilana said. “He did what he knew was right, and that to me is all the peace that I can ever find of it.”

Ilana turned 29 on Sunday, the day of her brother’s memorial service. On Monday, I asked her to contrast his heroism with that of Armstrong and Te’o.

“My brother was a hero simply by living his life,” she replied. “He didn’t get a contract to be a hero. ... In a world of competition that’s propelled by individual egos, Sam was fueled by the joy of those around him, and that motivation was what he acted on.”

An honest hero. It’s what the rabbi discussed at Sam’s service.

“‘The highest form of heroism is if you die saving someone else’s life,’” Sam’s father recalled him saying. “‘All your sins are wiped clean. Whatever you’ve done in life doesn’t matter. You go to heaven and you’re a hero.’ That put things in perspective in a way that I hadn’t looked at before.”

Perspective. Maybe that’s something we all need when considering heroes.